Pitchou May 3, 2012, 09:12:52

Hi Ben,Great post. A few thoughts from me. Firstly, I don’t think ascces to technology in classrooms is quite as encompassing as it seems from reading your post. Yes, there has certainly been huge changes with the DER program for year nine, and that change will continue, but having just returned to my primary school after 5 terms away there seems to have been almost no change in ascces in this space. I agree completely with your point on eTextbooks vs internet. We should be encouraging teachers and students to be critically evaluating web content as it is dynamic, relevant and far more authentic than textbook material. Being able to analyse this content and consider bias, inconsistency and the potential for inaccuracies is going to be one of the most important skills that we can give students.Lastly, on student creators. This seems to be a huge point of challenge for a lot of teachers. I personally think that the way the DER laptops have been set up an implemented provides an amazing opportunity for student creativity. The hard part is convincing the teachers to allow students to take the technology and run with it, using the creative power of that the laptops enable to look at the content in fresh and interesting ways.